That made me grin. I was oh-so-glad I didn’t have to do the run around the graveyard anymore. I mean, Suzy and I still worked out, but it was different and more suited to a woman’s body. We did cardio, sure, but we also did things like yoga for flexibility, climbing fences for obvious reasons, and exercises to increase our upper body strength. Not just running around a graveyard for miles and miles.
I let myself in through the gate, and Robert popped up to my left, appearing as he so often did. “Hey, I thought you were going to stay at the house?” He’d already returned my bag when I’d checked in, so I figured he would stick behind with Kinkly and Feish. I still had Grimm’s pages and his family’s silver coin, so they were safe with me, for the moment.
“Friend. Trouble,” he said as he swayed in time with my steps forward, his shoulder bumping mine here and there.
“Great,” I mumbled, feeling the dull fatigue that had begun to eat at me. Really, you’d think that finding out that I was a quarter fae, plus half something else, courtesy of my father, would have given me some respite from things like body aches, fatigue, running on empty. Nope, not me.
I felt as human as ever despite the whole seeing ghosts and such.
I walked down the pathway to the center of the training ground. A massive tomb with a standing angel on top, one wing broken—not broken as in broken off, but actually carved broken and hanging limp from its back—marked the center of the Hollows’s training grounds.
As I drew closer, Eammon was easier to spot. Being a leprechaun had its disadvantages and being invisible in a crowd of taller men was one of them.
But he’d dragged up his waist-high stool from the interior of the tomb and stood on it in the grass, waving his fists about, making him taller than everyone else there. Something had put him in quite the rage.
The other mentors were with him, standing back, letting him do his thing. Tom, the resident mage, saw me first. “Breena, what are you doing here?” He strode toward me and pulled me into a big hug. I hugged him back.
“Couldn’t stay away. All these old guys are such a draw, am I right?” I grinned up at him, and he put his hands on my arms.
“You look good, no more bullet holes?” His dark brown eyes were inquisitive as if the question wasn’t quite rhetorical. The hole in my leg from Sarge shooting up Eric’s cabin had healed to a tiny scar.
“None today.” I shrugged. “But the day isn’t over.”
Eammon flagged me over. “Come on, Bree. Don’t be shy. We’re all still friends even if we’re in direct competition, right, lass?”
Oh. I hadn’t really thought of that. I shrugged. “I promise only to take the jobs you turn down, how about that?”
Eammon gave me a sharp look and I smiled. Because the Hollows Group had scoffed at the job that had earned me the most money, and they’d flat out turned down the one that had secured my reputation in the shadow world.
“Smart ass,” he muttered.
“Short stack,” I threw back.
Louis sniffed. “What are you doing here?”
Corb smiled but I didn’t look at him. I would deal with him and his games later. “I actually came to talk to you, Louis. You game for a chat?”
Louis startled and pressed a hand to his chest, fingers splayed wide. “Me? Why me?”
“Are you not the resident necromancer? I need some help deciphering something to do with ghosts.” I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. Because he and Eammon were right. We might still be friends, but they were not obligated to help me, not one bit. “I can pay you for your time.” I did grin at that.
Louis did not grin. “I am not some cheap whore peddling my wares.”
“Expensive call girl?” I offered. “I’ve got twenty bucks with your name on it. Another twenty if you’re really good.” I couldn’t resist even though it was likely he’d spit on me now. The truth was I could already see that he’d say no, no matter what I offered.
A string of curses in French were thrown my way and he bit his thumb at me. I rolled my eyes. “That’s an Italian move, isn’t it?”
Louis stormed off and his trainee—Chad, if I remembered correctly—was right behind him, trailing his mentor closely. The thing was, when I was around Louis, there was no sense of the dead like there had been at the Marshall House. No sense of ghosts or anything . . . and then there was the fact that he couldn’t see Robert. I’d always thought that was strange. Shouldn’t a necromancer be able to see an undead skeleton? Hell, even Roderick could see Robert.
I turned to look at Eammon. “Is he even a necromancer?”
Eammon seemed as shocked by my question as by the possibility I raised. “Well, of course he is. He is one of the best—”
I held up a hand. I’d learned recently that the Hollows wasn’t the well-regarded group I’d initially believed them to be. They were considered the duck-ups of Savannah. They only took on trainees not desirable to the more prestigious Savannah Council Enforcers or SCE. “Okay, fine. Maybe I’ll ask Annie.”
Tom shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” I frowned. “Annie’s one of the good ones.”
Tom shook his head a second time. “She’s been off lately and been downright mean with a few patrons. Not like her, but something has her on edge, so just steer clear would be my suggestion.”
Beside Tom, Corb gave the slightest nod. “I agree with him, steering clear of Annie if you can would be best, at least until someone talks some sense into her.”
Well, so much for that idea. I was disappointed. Annie was one of the few people I would’ve liked to have known better.
“All righty then. I’ll find someone else to talk to. Nice to see you all. Come by for tea sometime.”
I turned my back on them and started back the way I’d come, stopping after a few feet because a rather large handsome man hurried to get in front of me.
“Sarge. How’s the leg doing?”
His golden eyes swept downward as he looked at his feet. “I am so, so sorry I tried to kill you, Breena. You have to believe me. And I won’t stand in the way of you and Corb getting together. I—”
I put a hand up. “Sarge, stop it. That spell wreaked havoc on everyone, not just you.” Also I didn’t know what to say to him about Corb. No. That wasn’t true. I did have something to say. “Besides, I know Corb was just getting close to me to use me—Davin said so himself. None of it was real.” I winked up at Sarge. “We’re all good, okay?” A sigh of relief slid out of him, and I patted his massive bicep as I strode past him. “But you owe me.”
He grunted as if I’d punched him in the belly. “That’s it?”
I shrugged and kept walking. “That’s it.”
In the shadow world, favors were as good a currency as money or gold. And a favor from a werewolf couldn’t be a bad thing as far as I was concerned.
I made my way to the gate, Robert swaying to my left. He collapsed at my feet, and I scooped up the finger bone and tucked it between my boobs.
Might as well give some man a thrill, even if he was a skeleton.
Corb caught up with me just as I reached the gate. I saw him from the corner of my eye and slipped through the iron rods so we had that between us.